The present invention relates to burner assemblies for appliances utilizing gaseous fuel and in particular relates to fuel burner assemblies for domestic cooking appliances. In the manufacture of gas cooking ranges for household use, it is necessary to provide ease of assembly and removal of the individual fuel burners where an array of burners is provided on the top of the range and to reduce the manufacturing cost to a minimum in order that the appliance may be mass produced and remain competitive in the market for household appliances.
Heretofore, in one common arrangement of top fuel burners for domestic ranges, the burner is formed with an inlet which is adapted to be connected to a fuel supply tube in such a manner as to provide an aspirator to entrain a flow of air necessary for the fuel air mixing in order to provide a combustible mixture which can produce flame at the burner outlet ports. In the design and manufacture of gas burner assemblies for cooking appliances, it has been found desirable to locate the air aspirator at the burner inlet in order to enable the use of a smaller diameter tubing for connection to the burner. Where the aspirator has been located remotely from the burner, a larger diameter tube is necessitated for delivering the air/fuel mixture from the aspirator inlet to the burner inlet. In assembling the burners in the rangetop during the manufacture of household ranges employing remote burner aspirators, it has proven difficult to accurately locate and connect the larger diameter tube to the burner and remotely to the fuel supply tube because of the inflexibility of the larger diameter tube.
In household rangetop burner arrangements where the aspirator is located at the burner inlet and the fuel supply tube is connected to a top burner by a threaded fitting it is necessary to accurately align the ends of the supply tubes with the burners in order to make the threaded connections which has proven to be difficult to connect where the supply tubes are situated above an oven and are bent or formed at angles within the range cabinet. Furthermore, it has been difficult to assemble and tighten the threaded connection where access is only provided through a cut-out in the top of the range and where the supply tube enters the burner inlet on the lower portion thereof. In addition, the threaded type connections have proven to be costly and cumbersome in that the diameter of the fitting required for the threaded connection reduces the area around the tube available for aspiration of primary burner air for a given burner inlet diameter. Where the space available for the burner is limited, it has been extremely difficult to design the burner for right angle fuel line attachment and yet provide adequate provision for aspiration of air at the burner inlet.
Accordingly, it has been desired to provide for connecting a fuel supply tube to the burner inlet and forming an aspirator at the connection in a manner that is low in manufacturing cost and which provides a positive connection and one which accommodates relative misalignment of the pre-positioned fuel supply tube where the tube is small enough in diameter to permit some flexing to enable assembly of misaligned parts.